Forgiveness and Forgetfulness
by SevReed
Summary: Six months after they split, Tori and Jade find themselves thrown back together by fate. Will it work this time, or has there been one betrayal too many?
1. Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Visitor

**New story, set a couple of years after high school. This will be a multi-part one. Please review and let me know what you think. Thanks!**

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Tori Vega was attempting to change a lightbulb, a task she was unenthusiastic about and technically unprepared for, when there was a knock at the door of her apartment. She roundly cursed whoever it was in advance, climbed down from the kitchen chair and flung the door open, only to discover that Fate wanted her to come out to play. She found herself staring straight into a pair of clear, blue-green eyes.

"Jade?" Six months ago she would have given anything to see those eyes again, now she felt as though she'd been kicked in the gut. They stood there, face to face, frozen for a moment.

"Hi," Jade said eventually, and Tori was gratified to see that the other girl at least had the grace to look uncomfortable. She made no move to let her in.

"What are you doing here?"

"I just... I was passing, and... I thought I'd come and see how you were."

It was clearly a lie, but she let it go. "You're about six months too late for that."

"I know." Jade gaze dropped to the floor. "I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe I should just..." She resettled the rucksack on her back, and headed away down the corridor.

 _I should just let her go,_ thought Tori. _That would be the smart thing to do. Just let her walk away_. "Wait." _Damn it, Tori_.

Jade turned, hesitantly, and Tori backed away from the door to let her through. "Come in."

"Are you sure?"

Tori nodded, and Jade retraced her steps, pushing bulkily past her into the apartment. Tori closed the door, feeling a sense of irrevocability, as though she'd invited a vampire over the threshold.

"You can sit down."

Jade did as she was bidden, dropping her bag and perching bolt-upright on the sofa, hands clasped together on her knees as though on her best behavior. Of course, now she was here, Tori thought grimly, hospitality and conversation were probably going to have to happen. "Coffee?"

She waited. Normally at this point there would be a long list of specifications and instructions on the correct and proper way to _make_ coffee, which Tori knew off by heart but which Jade had felt it necessary to reiterate every time, lest Tori forget that she once, _once_ , did it wrong.

Jade really _was_ on her best behavior, it seemed. "Uh, yeah," she said. "That would be great." Tori went grudgingly into the kitchen, feeling robbed of a chance to be offended.

"I see you've redecorated," Jade's voice called from the sofa. "It's... nice."

Tori was pretty sure that Jade _didn't_ think it was nice, not least because she'd chosen it to be exactly the opposite of the way Jade had decorated it in the first place. "Thanks."

"So, how have you been?"

Tori didn't answer. 'How have you been?' was definitely not, in the circumstances, a question that could be answered though a kitchen doorway. She carried two cups of coffee back through to where Jade was still sat patiently. She put them down on the table, a little too hard. "Coffee."

"Thanks. I was just saying-"

"I heard you."

"Oh. So...?"

"How do you _think_ I've been, Jade?" she snapped. "I've been having a marvellous time, thank you very much, sat here in an empty apartment I can barely afford after my girlfriend left me for another _guy_ without a fucking word. It's been a blast. I stopped crying every night after the first couple of months, but I still put in a few hours every now and then just to keep my hand in. You know, just in case my ex turns up, unannounced, to bring it all up again."

Jade's face crumpled. "I'm sorry," she said. "It wasn't supposed to be like that."

"Really."

"No! I just... It all happened so quickly."

"Don't give me that," Tori scoffed. "Don't tell me you of _all_ people were caught up in the whirlwind of romance. You knew exactly what you were doing, you just decided that your career was more important than I was."

"No, I-"

"How is _Marcus_ , anyway?" She pronounced the name as if it was spelt 'Dickwad'. "Has he done everything he promised? Is your career a glittering success? I haven't heard much of you on the TV, but then I've had other things to do. You know, what with the two jobs I have to do to keep this place up."

"I... There are a couple of things in the pipeline."

"Are there? Oh, good. It's nice to know it was worth all the-"

"He hurts me," Jade blurted out, suddenly. She pursed her lip quickly, as if ashamed that the words had escaped.

Tori's rant ground to a halt. "He _what?_ "

"He hurts me. Sometimes." Jade wouldn't look at her. Her voice was small and dry, barely a whisper in a desert.

" _Oh_ no. No, Jade." The bottom had fallen out of her world six months ago. Now it felt like it had collapsed completely. "You can't."

"Can't...?"

"You can't do this. You can't _come_ here," she said, angrily, "after _everything,_ and tell me this."

"I'm sorry, I just thought-"

"Do you have any idea how that _feels?_ " Tori could feel her fury rising. "Do you have any idea how it feels to know that all this time I've been sat here on my own like a fucking idiot while your fabulous new boyfriend, the one was supposed to launch your amazing career, the one that _you left me for_ ," she said, bitterly, "treats you like garbage? Do you have any idea what that does to me, to know that? That you ruined our life for-"

"Tori! Please!" Tori stopped, shocked into silence. "This was a mistake, okay?" Jade said, fighting back tears. "I'm sorry I bothered you. I'd better go." She hefted her bag onto her shoulder, and made her way to the door.

For a moment all Tori could do was watch her, dumbly. And then somewhere at the back of her mind a tiny part of her - a tiny, treacherous Tori - said, _she deserves it_.

The instant guilt that washed over her for even thinking that kicked her back into life. _I'm making her feel bad about someone else hurting her. What the hell?_

"Jade, wait," she said. The other girl turned, and Tori could see her make-up was smudged with tears. "Look," she said, quietly. "I'm pretty mad with you about a lot of things, Jade, but I'm not mad at you for this. I'm sorry."

Jade said nothing, but nodded. Tori's pride spent what seemed like an eternity wrestling with her conscience, and lost.

"If you want to," she said, reluctantly, "if you _need_ to, you can stay here for a while. Unless you've got other plans?"

Jade shook her head. _No._

"Then you can stay on the sofa. But listen," she said. "This... doesn't mean we've made up, okay? I'll help you, but I don't know that I can forgive you. Do you understand?"

Again, Jade nodded. _Yes_.

"I'll let you have the spare key. You know where everything is, anyway."

Jade finally spoke. "Thank you," she whispered.

They stood facing each other for a moment. Eventually Tori cleared her throat. Her self-respect had taken a battering anyway, she might as well make the most of it. "Jade?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Do you know how to change a lightbulb?"

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	2. Chapter 2 - Ashes and Broken Glass

**Many thanks to those of you who kindly reviewed and said you wanted to see more, much appreciated.**

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Tori awoke to the smell of coffee and pancakes, and for one horrible moment thought she'd fallen asleep at work. She opened her eyes, relieved to find she wasn't face down on the hot-plate, and tried to put her senses into context.

Jade. Jade was here.

Tori had gone out yesterday to do her evening shift at the diner and by the time she came home the girl was fast asleep on the sofa under a blanket, so she'd left her and gone to bed. Now Jade was awake and at large in her apartment.

The clock told her it was time to get up anyway, so she cancelled the alarm and contemplated the thought of facing her. She probed her feelings and found them empty, drained. She should be angrier than this. She struggled to find something concrete to be mad about, something to use as a shield. _She's eating my food_ , she thought, ignoring the obvious absurdity of inviting someone to stay and then starving them. _How dare she._

She pulled on a gown and crept towards the kitchen. The lightbulb had been changed, she noticed, and so had two others that she'd been ignoring long enough to get accustomed to the gloom. Jade was annoyingly practical like that. Tori barely knew one end of a screwdriver from the other, and in any case usually ended up using a butter knife for life's little 'screwdriver' moments. Jade, she suspected, simply glared at things until they started working again.

She peered around the kitchen door, and the sight of a barefoot and tousled Jade, wearing just the long T-shirt that she used to sleep in and humming as she worked at the stove, triggered memories so strong that for a few dizzying seconds it felt as though the whole of the last six months had been some kind of fever dream. Only the color of the wallpaper reminded her, with a dull thump in her chest, that it wasn't – Jade didn't live here anymore, and her presence in the kitchen was like being shown the prize you didn't win, opening a damaged gift, a birthday cake made from ashes and broken glass.

"Hey," said Jade, noticing her. "I made breakfast. I hope you don't mind."

"No, not all," Tori said, sourly. "Help yourself."

"Here."

"What?"

"Sit down."

"These are for me?"

"Who else? Come on, they're going cold." She placed a plate of pancakes on the table as Tori grudgingly sat.

"How did you even know I'd be up this early?" Tori said.

"I do my research."

Tori noticed there was only one plate. "Aren't you having any?"

"No," said Jade, stealing her fury, "I'm good. I did use some of your coffee though. I'll go out and get some stuff this morning."

Tori stared at her pancakes as Jade bustled round her happily, fetching cutlery and syrup, and couldn't help but feel like a stranger in her own home.

"How long are you staying?" she said, abruptly.

For the first time Jade's cheerful demeanor faded. "I... don't know," she said. "I wasn't really expecting you to-"

"Well you must have been expecting _something_ ," Tori said, eyes still on the plate. "You brought your overnight stuff."

Jade started to protest until Tori looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly, toying with the fork in her hand. "I just thought there was a chance you might..." She put the fork down. "I was going to go to a hotel if you didn't want me."

Tori felt a little pang of guilt, not because of the hang-dog expression on Jade's face, but because she felt an ugly surge of pride welling up, an unfitting sense of triumph. _She needs me_ , she thought. _She's never needed me before_.

And it was true. That was the way their relationship had always been. Tori needed things - affection, support, comfort, love - and Jade provided them. Tori broke things, Jade fixed them. Tori took her first driving lesson, Jade arranged to have the car towed to the body shop afterwards. That was just the way they were.

Which had made it even more devastating when she'd walked out on her that day, and Tori's triumph felt uglier still as she wondered whether she'd had anything to do with it, whether Jade had simply got tired of being taken for granted.

She pushed her plate away from her, and Jade's face fell even further. "You don't want them?" she said, forlornly.

"I do. I just... " Tori sighed. "Get yourself a plate."

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Tori hated working at the diner. The work itself wasn't unpleasant, and she got to meet people, but the other girls didn't like her. She'd tried to be friends, but once they found out she'd been to a performing arts school they'd never let it go.

"Hey, Little Miss Fairycakes." A tight-faced woman of around thirty passed behind her, nudging her sharply. "This ain't 'Frankie and Johnny'. Get some work done."

"But I've _been-"_

The woman had already sailed away into the kitchen. " _Yes_ , Helen. Right away, Helen," she muttered. She screwed up her face and made angry little stabbing motions with her pen, but the gods of voodoo failed to make Helen explode in agony.

She began to wipe down the counter top for the fifteenth time that morning, when Jade appeared unexpectedly for the second time in as many days. "Hi," she said, brightly.

"Hi," said Tori, less enthusiastically. If Jade thought she was going to sit here drinking coffee all morning while Tori was working, she had another thing coming. "What are you doing here?"

"I've been shopping," Jade said, proudly. "Food and stuff." She dumped two large bags on the gleaming counter in front of her.

"Hey, I've just cleaned that!" She flapped at Jade with her cloth. "Off!"

Jade moved the bags to the stool beside her. "I thought I'd cook dinner tonight."

"You don't have to do that."

"I kinda do. Otherwise all this stuff's going to go to waste."

Tori peered over the counter into the bags. "That looks… expensive," she said, tentatively. They hadn't got round to discussing whether Jade was still financially solvent in her new 'situation'.

"I didn't raid the housekeeping, if that's what you're thinking," Jade said.

"I didn't mean-"

"It's all still there," Jade went on, "although you've _really_ got to think of a better place to hide it."

"Jade!"

"What? I'm just looking out for you."

Tori simmered gently. _I do my research_. Jade had probably been through the entire apartment with a fine-toothed comb.

She was about to say something, but it turned out Jade had plans that didn't involve listening. "Well, gotta go," she said, scooping up a bag in each arm. "Things to do. See you at home."

She shouldered her way back out of the door leaving a speechless Tori in her wake.

 _Home?_

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It smelt good. It smelt very good. It grabbed Tori by the nose and drew her from the doorway into the apartment, leading her on, whispering soft promises of sensory delight. It took her coat and her bag and dumped them unheeded on the sofa and brought her once more into the kitchen to find Jade West busy at the stove.

"Ten minutes," she said, without turning round. "Wine?"

Tori wasn't sure if this was an instruction or an offer, but she looked around to see an open bottle of expensive red on the side. "Thanks. You want one?"

"I got one."

"Oh." The bottle seemed alarmingly light. "I see you've-"

"Most of it's in the sauce," Jade headed off the accusation. "Don't panic. I've got another."

Tori poured herself a small, sensible glass of wine, considered it for a moment, then drank it and poured herself a larger, less sensible one. All the way home she'd been intending to bring up the issue of her privacy, or lack thereof, but somehow the warm fug of the kitchen and the flush of the alcohol made it seem oddly inappropriate. "Can I help?" she said, instead.

"Nope."

"Okay."

"You can set the table, though. There are some plates in the-"

"I _know."_

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An hour later, they sat on the sofa in companionable silence, feet up on the table, watching TV. Tori turned her head to look at the other girl, studying the profile of her face. When Jade didn't seem to notice, she steeled herself, and said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Jade's eyes flickered towards her, and back to the screen. "Talk about what?"

"About you and Marcus."

Jade frowned. "You want to talk about me and Marcus?"

"Well, not _about_ you, but…"

"But what?"

"About what happened."

She could see Jade tense. "No."

"I just thought it might help to talk about it. You know, to a friend."

"No, it wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because you're not my friend, are you?"

Tori's jaw dropped. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Jade said, quickly. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant, you're not _just_ a friend, you're my…" She took a deep breath. "You were my _girlfriend,_ and there are some things I don't feel... comfortable talking about."

Jade's eyes stayed locked on the screen, but her cheeks burned red, and Tori knew what that meant. Despite what Tori had expected when they'd started dating, Jade was rather prudish when it came to that side of things. She felt tears rising, hot and heavy on her lids, and hurried to blink them away before Jade could notice.

"Okay, well," she said, clearing her throat. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure."

She turned her attention back the TV, determined not to push it any further, and they watched in silence for a while.

Until finally she heard a tiny, whispered, "Thank you."

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	3. Chapter 3 - The Conversation

**Well, here are, another little moment in the life of our new roommates. Again, thanks to all who are reviewing, it's nice to know whether we're going down the right track. Things will eventually take a more dramatic turn, I promise.**

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Tori woke early after a fitful sleep, torn apart by weird anxiety dreams of chasing a mute and tearful Jade through the woods, punctuated by visions so darkly erotic that she began to question her own sanity. She lay there panting, wondering if these things were connected. Meanwhile, her brain had already started worrying without her. She scurried to catch up.

It seemed the thought that had occurred to her the previous morning was still refusing to go gentle into that good night.

What if it was me?

 _Did I drive her away?_

It sounded ridiculous. She'd always thought that Jade had secretly liked looking after her, doing little things for her, being the one she turned to. So much so that she'd found herself playing up to it, pleading helplessness in the face of things she _knew_ she could do, offering up that winsome little smile that made Jade roll her eyes and say _I'll do it_. She'd acted weak because she thought that Jade wanted to be strong.

But maybe she hadn't. Maybe that long-suffering sigh she let out to greet each new calamity or request had been real, a sign that she was slowly but surely losing patience. Tori had treated her like a boyfriend, sometimes like her _dad,_ and she wondered now if Jade had resented it, found it oppressive, insulting even. She tried to recall the weeks before Jade had left, tried to think of the last time she'd complimented her or comforted her, told her how pretty she was. She'd thought Jade wasn't interested in those things, was too tough to care. What if she'd been wrong? And now it was all too late.

What if Jade had left her because _she_ wanted to be looked after for once? What if Tori really _had_ driven her into the arms of someone who hurt her?

 _This isn't your fault,_ her conscience told her, sternly. _She left you for her career._

But what if-

 _She could have talked about it, told you how she felt, but she didn't. She ran away like a coward._

Maybe she didn't feel-

 _Not. Your. Fault._

Frustrated by the effort of arguing with herself, she crawled out of bed and went to find the girl in question.

Bacon was frying, and she found herself salivating and wondering how long her digestion and figure could cope with her visitor.

"Breakfast," Jade announced.

"You don't have to do this, you know."

"I like to do it." She shrugged. "Anyway, it gives me an excuse to get up off that awful sofa. I'm going to need physio for months after this."

Tori was about to point out the inadvisability of looking a gift horse in the mouth, but thought better of it, considering she was about to eat what was essentially a free breakfast. This was clearly Jade's food, Tori's fridge was just a large box for keeping cold air and old milk in.

She sat, while Jade fussed around her, eventually settling herself noisily into the seat opposite.

They ate in silence for a minute. "Jade," Tori said. "Can I ask you something?"

Jade sighed. "A couple of weeks. Three, max. I'm _trying_ , Tori, I've just got to-"

"No, it not that."

Jade narrowed her eyes. "Then what?" she said. "Unless... _Oh_."

The sound was low and drawn out, a groan of recognition and resignation.

"What?"

"Do you really want to have this conversation over breakfast?"

"Which conversation?" Tori said. "You don't even know what I'm going to say yet."

"I think I do."

"Then what is it?"

"This is the conversation," said Jade, stabbing a piece of bacon, "where you want to know why I left you."

"No it isn't!"

"Yeah, it is."

"It isn't!"

"Well, what then?"

"All right, it kind of is."

"Ugh."

"I just wanted to _know,"_ Tori said, quietly, "if it was my fault."

Jade choked on her coffee. " _Your_ fault?"

"Yes."

"What on earth makes you think it was your fault?"

"Well, I don't know," Tori said, her face flushing. "Because of the way I was."

"What way?"

"You _know_."

"Really don't."

"Did you ever resent the fact that I..." She hesitated. "Did you ever feel bad that you had to be the 'guy'?"

"The _guy_?"

"Yeah. You know. In the relationship."

There was a pause.

"You're saying I'm butch?"

"What? No!"

"You think I'm manly?"

"Jade!"

"I mean, that's quite something to find out after all this time."

"I didn't _mean_ it like that."

"I gotta start shaving more often."

"Look-"

"Keep my big hairy hands in my pockets, just in case."

"Stop that!"

Jade waited for a moment, a blank expression on her face.

"I'm sorry, little lady, I was too busy staring at your tits to listen. You know what us guys are like. What were you saying?"

"Urrgh." Tori wrapped her gown tightly across her chest, self-consciously.

"Sorry. That reminds me, I was going to do us a couple of fried eggs."

The bacon hit Jade right in the eye. " _Aargh!_ " she cried, clutching at her face. "Man down!"

"I told you to stop with the... Are you all right?" Tori said, anxiously, when Jade bent over the table, moaning, head in her hands. "Jade?"

Jade slowly stretched out one shaking hand away from her face, it's palm stained red.

"Oh, my God!" Tori squeaked, clamping her hands to her mouth in horror. "I'm so sorry! I'm so... I'm..." She saw that Jade's shoulders were shaking in silent laughter.

"Very funny," she said, grumpily, as Jade looked up grinning, and licked the ketchup off her hand. "The last time you tried that, we had to clean all that crap out of the school canteen."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm trying to have a serious conversation here."

"And I'm trying _not_ to. Honestly, Tori," Jade said, "do we have to do this?"

" _I_ think so."

"Okay, let's put it another way. Are you going to throw me out if we _don't_?"

That was it. Tori slammed her fork down. "For God's sake, Jade," she snapped. "Of course not. Look, I know there are things you don't want to talk about, and I understand that. But don't you think I deserve _something_?"

"Tori-"

"I'm not asking you to _explain_ ," she said. "I'm not asking you to grovel, or tell me it was a mistake, or that you've missed me, or that I was the best thing you ever had. I'm not even asking you to _apologize_. I just want to know that one simple thing." Tori could feel tears stinging her eyes, and fought them back. "I just need to know whether it was _me_ ," she said, in a tight little voice. "Whether _I_ did something to make you leave."

"It's complicated..."

"I have to _know_."

Jade caught her eye for a moment and then looked away. "No," she said, softly. "You didn't do anything."

"Really?"

"Really."

Tori exhaled the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "Thank you."

"Is that... it?"

"Yes."

"You don't want to know anything else?"

"No."

"Okay. Look, I never wanted you to think-"

"It's fine."

"Right."

"Good." Slightly embarrassed by her outburst, Tori stared down at her plate, and noticed it was empty. "Could I… have my bacon back?"

"You want your _bacon_ back?"

"Yes."

"This bacon?"

"If you don't mind."

"This razor sharp bacon that you threw at me?"

"Look, just give me the... oh no. _No_. Not like that. No! Don't you dare!"

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"Okay, you can get off of me now."

"Do you surrender?"

"I surrender."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. Just... put the ketchup bottle down."


	4. Chapter 4 - Pickles

**Hi, we're back. Anyone still interested? I appreciate your reviews, let me know if you want me to stick with it – I'm hoping this is going to be a little more light-hearted than my other story (although it could hardly be any less) but there will be a more serious side…**

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Tori leaned on the counter at work, daydreaming. She could still smell tomato ketchup and bacon on her, but she was in a diner and she supposed no one would notice. The food fight that morning had unsettled her slightly, the frisson she'd felt as she'd knelt astride Jade, pinning her down and and threatening her with the ketchup bottle, had been mirrored by something else for a moment, a look in Jade's eyes that she couldn't quite place.

She had a troubling feeling of... not deja vu, exactly, because clearly they _had_ been here before. But it was too easy. Too easy to forget that this wasn't real, that laughing and fighting over the breakfast table wasn't going to lead to where it used to, and that made the little shards of pain she felt when she remembered all the sharper. But still it _felt_ real, like the beginning of something, rather than the end, and that was enough, for the time being, to stave off the loneliness. Maybe that was why she'd let Jade walk back into her life without a fight, practically begging her forgiveness. _Just tell me it wasn't my fault._ She knew how pathetic that sounded, she knew she should have demanded more, but the fact was that, as much as Jade didn't want to talk about it, Tori didn't want to _hear_ about it. She didn't want to know, didn't want to face the evidence of Jade's life apart from her, the cold logic of her decision to leave. At some point the woman she _thought_ had loved her must have weighed her up and made a choice, must have sat facing her across the breakfast table, listening to her chatter away, knowing that she wouldn't be there tomorrow. And now she was back. And all those things would be unbearable without the answer to the one question that she couldn't bring herself to ask.

 _Did Jade want her back?_

She felt something sting her ear painfully and whirled around to see only an empty doorway, the sound of laughter fading, retreating into the kitchen. She looked down in search of whatever they'd thrown. She shifted her foot and there it was, a small paper airplane.

She unfolded it slowly, half knowing what she'd find. It was a picture. It was crudely drawn, but it was pretty clear what the two girls were doing, or at least what one girl was doing to the other, and she felt a weird sense of injustice rising along with the tears. _We never even used to do that,_ she thought, as though that would rob their accusation of its sting. She should have it out with them. She should go in there and... Well, she should at least tell Helen, maybe she'd do something.

She screwed the paper up and stuffed it in her pocket, and wondered if they'd seen Jade come into the diner. They couldn't have known it was her, but she found herself wishing they had, and that Jade had seen the picture. _Then we'd see who's laughing,_ she told herself, and indulged a brief fantasy of an outraged Jade vaulting over the counter to rain down scissory death on them all.

And now she knew why she couldn't bring herself to ask the question. Because as long as she didn't ask, as long as she didn't actually cut into the birthday cake, she could pretend it was real. Just for a while.

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"Could you open this jar for me?"

"What, with my great big muscular arms? Wait, let me just wipe my sweaty palms on my moustache first."

" _Jade!_ Look, I don't think you're masculine, okay? That wasn't what I meant."

"Yeah, right."

"Oh, come on! You know I think you're pretty. I've told you that."

"Yeah, once. And I had to drag that out of you."

"You didn't! And anyway, that was kind of an awkward situation. I've told you since though, haven't I?"

"I don't recall. Tell me again, maybe it'll jog my memory."

Tori sighed. "You _are_ pretty."

"Yeah, that rings a bell."

"You see?"

"I remember the dismal lack of enthusiasm. Really brings it all back."

"Hey! _You_ said I was only pretty in the dark."

"No, I said 'from certain angles'."

"That's not better!"

"At least it was voluntary."

"Right. Fine. You're the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth. Now, are you going to open this jar for me or not?"

"No."

"So, what, you're not going to open a jar for me now because I didn't say you were _pretty_ enough?"

"No, I'm not going to open a jar for you because you need to learn something. Sit down."

"What? Why?"

"Sit."

Tori sat, grumpily, as Jade placed the jar on the coffee table in front of her. "This," she said, "is a jar."

"I know that! I'm not-"

"Hush! Now inside this jar," Jade went on, "are some pickles. Which means you have a problem."

Tori muttered something to the effect that the pickles weren't her only problem, but Jade ignored her.

"You don't want these pickles to be inside this jar," she said. "You want them to be inside _you_. So," she shook the jar. "What are you gonna do?"

"Well I was _going_ ," Tori said, exasperated, "to ask you to open it."

"No!" The sharpness made the other girl jump. "Come on, Tori, show some _initiative_. You're a smart girl. There are a million ways you could open this jar," Jade said. "You could throw it against a wall, you could hit it with a hammer. You could drill a hole in the top. You could use some boiling water and the principles of thermodynamics. You could hire the Pied Piper of Picklin to entice them out with his magic flute. You could even," she said, "take a slightly damp cloth and twist it around the lid to give you a bit of leverage. I mean, you know. If you wanted to."

There was a long pause.

"You know, you're kind of a smartass for someone who's sleeping on a sofa."

"No, I'm just a smartass. Whether I'm sleeping on a sofa is irrelevant."

"Really?" said Tori. "Is that so? Well, let's just see how _irrelevant_ it is, shall we?"

"Wait, what are you... No, come on, Tori, you can't be serious… I didn't mean it! Don't do that! Please!"

There was enough genuine panic in Jade's voice to make Tori pause in her pretense of throwing the rucksack out of the door. "Okay, I wasn't really going to," she confessed, "but give me some credit, Jade. I've had to look after myself for the last six months, without any help from you or anyone." She picked up the pickles. "And if you think in all this time that I haven't been able to open a single jar of pickles because I didn't think of that, then you're wrong. It's just that _this_ one," she brandished the offending jar, irritably, "is particularly..." She made one last, futile attempt to shift the lid. "Ugh... tight." She stormed off into the kitchen.

She came back two minutes later.

Jade carefully said nothing, as Tori sat heavily on the sofa next to her, tight-lipped. There was a sullen silence for a moment, until finally the open jar was moved an inch closer to her.

"Pickle?"

Jade peered into the jar. "No, thanks," she said. "They give me wind."

"Gross."

"They give you wind, too."

"Shut up."

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Thankfully for Jade, it wasn't that night that it happened. But it was bound to happen sooner or later. Tori knew the sofa was uncomfortable, she'd woken up on it enough times, surrounded by the detritus of a night partying alone. So it should have come as no surprise to find herself woken at two in the morning by a figure at her bedroom door.

Jade, hair ruffled, t-shirt hanging loose off one shoulder, clutching a pillow protectively in front of her like a teddy bear. "I can't sleep," she said, quietly.

Tori gazed at her in the half-light, head bowed, eyes hidden in the shadows. She shuffled further over towards what she still thought of as 'her' side of the bed, and dragged back the covers. Jade slipped wordlessly in beside her, with a look of silent gratitude, and Tori turned away, trying to ignore the heady sense of familiarity at the warm body so close to her.


	5. Chapter 5 - Three Little Words

**Hi, season's greetings and all that – this might be the last update over the Christmas holidays so I'm getting it out now. Many thanks for the reviews, as always feel free to let me know what you think, this may be a longer story than I'd originally planned.**

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It happened again two nights later. And the night after that. This time there was no whisper in the darkness, Jade simply appeared, shadowed in the doorway, waiting until Tori pulled back the covers. And each morning, when Tori woke up, Jade would be in the kitchen, cooking breakfast and humming.

But the next time - the next time was different.

Tori didn't know what time it was when she turned over, half asleep, still dreaming. Jade was on her side, facing away from her, her breathing deep and steady, and without thinking Tori slipped her arm across her, her hand sliding underneath the T-shirt, brushing across bare flesh, fingertips ghosting over pale skin. She felt the other girl stiffen with a tiny intake of breath, and then relax, as she moved her hand further, in an all too familiar ritual - until finally Jade responded, as she always had.

But no words were spoken, no promises, nothing but the murmur of bodies in the night, and the next morning Tori awoke to an empty bed. She listened carefully, but there was no sound of breakfast being made, so she put on her gown and crept quietly out of the room.

Jade was asleep on the sofa, blankets drawn up to her chin, snoring gently. Tori watched her for a moment, and wondered whether last night had actually happened. The dull ache in her body told her it had, but then why was Jade sleeping out here? She was interrupted in her thoughts by the fact that Jade was waking up.

"What the... What time is it?" She grabbed for her phone. "Damn it. Sorry." She peeled off the blankets and stood up, shaking the sleep away. "I'll get breakfast started."

Tori was a little taken aback. "You don't need to do that."

"It's fine. Just overslept, that's all. You get ready for work." She disappeared in the kitchen.

Tori followed. "Are you... okay?" she asked, tentatively.

"Fine."

"It's just that-"

"You want pancakes?"

"What? I mean, yes. Pancakes is good. _Are_ good. Um..."

"Go get dressed."

Tori backed out of the kitchen to do as she was told, leaving Jade to start breakfast. She paused for a moment to see if she could detect a change in mood from the clatter of the pans, but nothing seemed amiss, except...

Humming. Jade wasn't humming.

She went to her room feeling uneasy.

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They ate quickly, Jade making almost incessant small talk until it was time for Tori to leave, and by the time Tori reached work she was in a state of mild panic.

Why won't she talk about it? Afterwards Tori had felt like she'd been giving some kind of concession, a peace offering. She'd shared her bed, and then she'd shared herself. She wasn't asking Jade to thank her for it, obviously, that would be obscene - it had been as much for her own benefit as anything. But still...

Then she was struck by a much darker thought. What if Jade _hadn't_ wanted to do it? What if she'd done it because she thought it was something demanded of her, the price of sanctuary? She replayed the scene in her head, the way Jade's body had gone rigid, almost cringing at first, and Tori had a horrible vision of Jade's face, turned away from her, twisted in silent revulsion at her touch.

She shook her head to clear the picture from her mind. It was nonsense. Jade wouldn't have done it if she didn't want to, she was sure. She would have just said no. Wouldn't she?

They'd talk about it tonight, clear the air. Definitely.

Resolution made, she picked up her order pad and took down her cap from its spot on the coffee machine. It felt suspiciously heavier than usual, and she peered inside to find that it was, unaccountably, full of raw eggs. She dumped it into the trash and tried not to hear the giggling from the kitchen. It was going to be a long day.

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They didn't talk about it. Tori came home to a spotless apartment to find Jade hunched over her laptop. She dropped her bag and wandered over. "Hey."

"Mm? Oh, hey," Jade said, as if Tori was the last person she was expecting.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking," Jade said, squinting at the screen and deleting an errant comma, "for a job."

"Oh. Right."

 _Now. Now was the time. Right now. Say it, Tori._

"Um, Jade?"

"Yeah?"

But she couldn't. Couldn't bring herself to say those three little words. _About last night..._

"Do you want coffee?"

" _I enclose my résumé …_ What? Oh. No, I'm good, thanks. I'll go put some on, though, if you-"

"I can do it." It came out harsher than she'd intended, but Jade didn't seem to notice. She went into the kitchen.

"So," she called back. "Any luck?"

"Not really. I think I'm going to have to lower my sights."

"I can ask at the diner, if you want?"

There was no answer. _Doesn't want to lower her sights that far_ , Tori thought.

 _Or she doesn't want to work with you._

Something occurred to her. The price of sanctuary. She came back to the sofa and sat down.

"Look," she said, "if this is about paying me rent, or anything, you really don't need to worry about it. I mean, you're already buying all the food and everything..."

"That's sweet, Tori," Jade said, and the little smile seemed genuine. "But I can't stay here forever."

"Well, no, but there's no rush, is there? I can put up with you a while longer. You know, if I have to." She nudged Jade in the ribs to make sure she knew it was a joke, then worried that it might come across as a salacious reference to last night. "I mean..."

Jade rolled her eyes and closed the laptop. "I'll get dinner on."

"Why don't we go out?" Tori said, suddenly. "My treat. You've cooked enough."

There was a mischievous pause. "You don't like my food?"

"What? Yes, of course I do!"

"But you've have enough of it?"

"No! It's just I thought that…" It took a few moments for it to sink in that Jade was messing with her. "Just get your coat."

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They sat in the restaurant, Jade eating, Tori watching. It's _easy_ , _Tori. Go on. Just make a start. Say it. Listen, Jade, about last night…_

But what _about_ last night? That was the question. What 'about last night' did she want to say? It didn't mean anything? It _did_ mean something? I liked it?

Did _you_ like it?

Did you hate it?

Did I take advantage of you?

 _Did I make you do it?_

No. That way lay madness. She should wait. Maybe Jade would bring it up. Maybe Jade thought _she_ didn't want to talk about it. She should just hint.

"How's your back?"

 _You know, your back. The one that hurts when you have to sleep on the sofa, my sofa, which you totally didn't have to last night because you were in my bed having real, actual sex with me, like you really, really wanted to._

"Mmm?" Jade looked up. "It's fine."

"Oh. Good."

Tori picked at her food. "The thing is-"

"You have _got_ to try this sauce. Here." Jade was holding out a spoon with some red gloop on it.

"Er… Okay." Tori leaned forward to taste it, but Jade twitched the spoon to leave a blob on her nose instead.

"Oops."

Tori squeaked and grabbed for a napkin, conversation temporarily abandoned. "You are _such_ a child," she said, crossly, wiping it away.

"Sorry," Jade said, clearly not. "It was an accident. What were you saying?"

"I… Doesn't matter."

"So, how was work?"

For a moment, Tori really wanted to tell her _. I hate it. It's boring and greasy, and the girls are mean to me_. "Okay," she said. "Busy."

"I thought you said you had two jobs?" Tori looked up and saw a trace of guilt pass across Jade's face, as she remembered she was the reason for that. She let her stew in it for a minute, in retaliation for the sauce incident.

"The club's being refurbished," she said. "It's shut for a few weeks."

"A night club?"

"Yep."

"I never figured you for a barmaid."

"I'm not," Tori said casually, chasing a pea around her plate. "I'm a stripper."

Jade choked and went a beautiful shade of puce. " _What?_ "

"Well, you know," Tori said, with a shrug. "A girl's got to pay the bills."

"Tori…"

"And some of the punters tip pretty well if you're willing to do the extras."

"Oh, God."

The look on Jade's face was so heartbroken that Tori couldn't keep it up. "Not really, you dunce," she said. "I work the cloakroom." She grinned smugly at the other girl's furious glare and felt strangely uplifted. _She cares_ , she thought. _She cares enough not to want me to be a hooker_. Aware that that was not the world's most romantic aspiration, she modified it. _She cares enough not to want me to be with anyone else._

 _._

 _._

 _._

They finished their meal and made their way back to the apartment, and it was there that Tori came up with a plan. It was her favorite kind of plan, because it didn't involve her actually doing anything, which meant she couldn't screw it up. The first part of her plan was simple - she'd just wait and see if Jade turned up at her door again. Quite what she'd do if she did, she wasn't sure. So the second part of the plan was much the same as the first.

She'd wait and see if Jade made the first move.


	6. Chapter 6 - A Little Night Musing

**Many thanks for your kind reviews, just a quick update, hope you're all enjoying your break (if you get one...)**

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Tori lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She glanced at the clock to see it was nearly one.

 _She's not coming._

The answer to the question she didn't want to ask was laid bare. Last night she'd given Jade a golden opportunity to jump-start their relationship, to take a short cut through the maze of apologies and recriminations that should have preceded their reconciliation and cut right to the chase - Tori could hardly object to her thinking there was a chance, when she'd made the first move herself. And now she felt aggrieved that she'd let down her defences for nothing. It was as though she'd deliberately taken in the Trojan Horse to find it empty, to find the besieging army had packed up and gone home.

She doesn't want you back. That's not why she's here.

She doesn't love you any more.

 _She didn't want to do it._

Five minutes. She'd give it five minutes. Maybe Jade was just deliberating, wondering whether she'd be welcome. That would make sense. Five minutes and if she didn't appear, that was the end if it. She'd just forget it and go to sleep. It was ridiculous to think like this. They were both grown women, for God's sake. If Jade really just need a shoulder to cry on - or more accurately, a shoulder to make breakfast for and bicker with - then so be it. Last night had just been a one-off, consenting adults, no big deal. Everybody slept with their ex. If Jade didn't want her back then Tori would just have to live with it, content herself with the thought that she was doing something good for a friend in need.

Four minutes.

And Jade _had_ been a friend, despite the way they'd ended up. Tori had never been happier than when they'd met again after school and she'd discovered that Jade had mellowed into someone she could spend time with, someone who actually wanted to spend time with _her_. She could remember with startling clarity the point that she'd thought of her as something other than a friend, a secret that she'd never dared let Jade in on, in case she felt like the victim of a long con.

 _"Well, thanks, Vega. That was the most humiliating experience of my life. Remind me to kill your sister. Slowly and painfully."_

 _"Don't be such a grouch. At least you'll get to be on T.V."_

 _"Be still, my beating heart. I don't want my first role on T.V. to be dressed as a piece of cheese being chased around the studio_ _by a bunch of kids in mouse suits_ _."_

 _"I thought we looked pretty hot, though."_

 _"What?"_

 _Tori colored. That wasn't quite how she'd meant it to come out. "I mean, you know, the costumes. We weren't dorky cheese, or..."_

 _Jade shook her head. "That might be your idea of hot, Vega, but then your love life's a mystery to me. A fact for which I'll be forever grateful. Is there any pizza left?"_

 _"I'll warm it up." Tori grabbed the leftover pizza and headed for the kitchen, thankful for the distraction. She wasn't entirely sure why Jade was still there. She'd only come over to get out of going to some stupid race with Beck, but that must have finished hours ago. And the fact that she'd forced her to share in the misery of Trina's television show should have sealed the deal as far as 'see you later, Vega' went. And yet here she was, making herself comfortable in Tori's house as if they were friends, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Tori pinched herself briefly to see if this was some kind of weird fever dream._

 _She came back to the sofa with the box to find the other girl flicking through the channels looking for old horror movies. She placed the pizza on the table and sat down beside her, as, apparently satisfied with her choice, Jade kicked off her boots, stuffed a slice of pizza in her mouth, and lay out on the sofa, throwing her legs casually across Tori's lap._

 _Tori froze. She knew that this was probably habitual, that Jade had just forgotten for a moment that she wasn't with Beck, but the unexpected contact made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She waited, blood pounding in her head, for Jade to realize her mistake and move, for her to laugh it off and somehow make Tori feel embarrassed, as though it was her fault, but she didn't. She just lay there calmly, legs up, turning Tori's world on its head._

Three minutes.

 _Tori lost track of how long she sat there, unable to move, but the longer she didn't say anything, the harder it got to protest. And all the time she could think of nothing else but Jade's legs, the curve of her calves, the feel of the delicate muscles underneath the skin, the weight of them against her own thighs - the slow heat rising through her body._

 _After what she guessed was about a thousand years, she manages to fire up enough control of her body to reach, tentatively, for a piece of pizza. She fully expected the movement to alert Jade to their predicament, but Jade simply shifted slightly to let her lean forward, then resettled as she moved back._

 _She stole a sidelong glance at her tormentor, but Jade was apparently engrossed in whatever they were watching, slowly macerating her way through a mouthful of pepperoni. Tori stared at her own food, feeling no inclination to eat it, just thankful for something to do with her hands._

 _"You wanna watch something else?"_

 _The sound made her jump. "Nothisisfine," she mumbled quickly, and rammed the pizza in her mouth to avoid having to say anything else. She felt Jade shrug, the slight movement transmitted and amplified by their contact. She tried to focus on the bloodbath on screen, but it didn't help. In addition to the mental anguish of the situation, she was now fighting a burning urge to pee, and that raised its own problems. Aside from the fact that to get to the bathroom she'd have to awkwardly draw attention to the legs, the though that when she sat down again those legs might not return filled her with an unexpected despair, as though her lap would be destined to go through life feeling cold and empty if she were to break the spell, if she were to shirk the responsibility of supporting these limbs which had so lately become the focus of her universe._

 _An eon later she began to relax slightly, and considered her position. Maybe this was normal. Maybe Jade sat like this with all kinds of people. Maybe this was her default T.V. position, regardless of who she was with. She felt a little twinge of jealousy, and hoped not. She didn't like to think of anyone else feeling this heat, this closeness, taking advantage of Jade's unwitting intimacy for their own pleasure. Without thinking, she lowered her hand, protectively, onto Jade's leg._

 _And it was then. Then that she knew. Every sensory detail of that moment was branded onto her brain, every sweltering degree of the warmth spreading from skin to skin, every contour of Jade's calf under her palm, the texture of the stockings against her fingers, everything. She felt dizzy. She couldn't even breath. She could stay here like this for..._

 _"Having fun there, Vega?"_

 _She almost choked._

Two minutes.

It had led nowhere. Not then. Jade had left. No fuss, no intimation that anything was wrong, no hint that anything unusual had occurred. It wasn't until later, one lazy afternoon in another place and time, that they'd sat in Tori's tiny apartment and she'd made her move - older now, and bolder, more experienced than at school. Jade had been shocked at first, and Tori had been a little disappointed to realize that the pizza moment had meant nothing to her, that she hadn't even noticed.

But Jade had finally succumbed to the idea, declared herself interested, and Tori had felt like everything had fallen into place for the first time. It hadn't been easy - their love life had been a complicated one, and for long enough it had been as if _every_ time was the first time, Jade shy and uncomfortable, Tori coaxing and reassuring, and while things had got better, the memory of it sat heavy in her mind. Tori had instigated a new intimacy, on the crest of a wave of friendship, and sometimes she was haunted by the suspicion that Jade had simply gone along with it, that she hadn't wanted to let her down, that her determination to keep Tori happy had led her into the bedroom with the same weary resignation that she'd shown over everything else.

One minute.

No. That couldn't be true. Jade must have loved her, surely? Otherwise she would never have given up the things she had, not for a friend. So if Jade _had_ loved her, what now? She looked at the clock again. _Now she should just go to sleep_ , she decided, and _forget about it_. You're a big girl, Tori, you of all people should know how these things work. People change, relationships end, and you can't make someone love you, no matter how hard you try. Maybe this is all for the best.

Time's up. She's not coming. Go to sleep.

She slipped out of bed, and padded softly out of the bedroom.

"Jade?" Her voice sounded loud, unwelcome in the silence. "Are you awake?"

There was no answer.

"I just wondered if..." She hadn't really thought any further than this. In fact, as far as her brain was concerned, she was now asleep. "I just wondered if you were comfortable."

Still no response.

"It's just that if you wanted to, you know, come to bed..."

And then she heard it. It was a sound she was familiar with, a sound she'd heard many times before, usually when she'd been unable to sleep, mind whirling on some trivial idea or imagined calamity that she'd wanted to share with her girlfriend in the middle of the night. Jade's breathing changed, almost imperceptably, from _being_ asleep, to _pretending_ to be asleep.

She had never felt so lonely, so desolate, as she did hearing it now, as she stood half-naked, shivering in the half light of her own apartment. _She doesn't want to talk to me._

She could have left it then. Gone back to bed, cried herself to sleep, and let the weeks and months wash over her until Jade left. She was sure that the other girl would never mention it, be happy to pretend that it never happened.

But she didn't.

She walked around the sofa and knelt down in front it. Jade was just a bundle of blankets, drawn up tight against the cold, just a tousle of brown hair poking out of the top.

"Jade?"

She though she could detect movement, a slight tensing of the grip on the blankets.

"I'm sorry."

There was nothing more from the bundle, and it looked as though it was going to be a one-sided conversation. She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry about last night," she said, hoarsely. "I know I kind of took advantage of you, and you probably didn't really want to do it, but I honestly thought you did. It wasn't fair of me, and I get that you're mad with me, so I'm sorry, okay? And if you want to just share the bed, I promise I'll... leave you alone."

She couldn't tell if any of this was penetrating the woollen wall between them. "I mean," she babbled on, hopefully, "I don't want you to think that _I_ think that _you_ ought to think that you have to... to... you know, _put out_ or something, because I really don't want you to think that I think that." She paused, as she ran through the last sentence again in her head. "You don't think that, do you?"

Very slowly, a pair of blue-green eyes appeared above the edge of the blanket, staring at her with an unnerving intensity.

 _"Do_ you?" The question hung tearfully in the silence. "Please, Jade, you have to..."

An arm emerged from the bundle, a single pale finger raised. It weaved its way hypnotically towards Tori, whose gaze followed it entranced, until it came to rest hard up against her lips.

"Shh."

And with that Jade unfurled from her cocoon, and rose to her feet. She took Tori gently by the hand, and led her into the bedroom.


	7. Chapter 7 - Secrets

**Hello again, and welcome back to 'How to Screw Up Your Relationship' Part 7. Many thanks for reading, please feel free to review.**

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Jade woke, groggy and unfocused, unsure of her surroundings. But the dull ache in her legs and the weight of the body beside her told her it was time. She slid from the bed, and reached back automatically for the pillow, only to find it pinned down by an entirely unexpected Tori Vega.

She blinked in the dimness and tried to clear her head. Tori. She was at Tori's place.

The relief flowed through her, washing away the fuzziness and revealing the ache for what it was. The physical memory of actual pleasure. She let go of the pillow and started to climb back into bed. No, she needed the bathroom first.

The light seemed startling, and she only became accustomed to it as she was washing her hands, seeing a room both familiar and changed, her influence eradicated and now resurgent in the form of a single, black toothbrush. She stared into the mirror, and traced a pale finger across the faint lines around her eyes. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe none of this mattered. She splashed water on her face.

 _You fucking idiot. You've just made everything worse._

She closed her eyes. She should leave right now. Just pack her bags and go. Throw herself under a bus or something. Then she wouldn't have to worry about any of this anymore.

She sighed, and went back into the bedroom. Tori had, as she often did, expanded to fill the space available, sprawling right across the bed. Jade had often wondered if, given enough room, Tori would eventually keep spreading out like a drop of oil in a pond, until she was just a perfect circle, one molecule thick. She gently shifted an arm and a leg and tucked herself into the edge of the bed, retrieving what covers she could, and took comfort in the fact that, at least here and now, she was welcome.

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Tori's alarm clock finally battered its way into her consciousness and reminded her politely that it was time to get the fuck up, if you don't mind. She shifted slightly to find a Jade-shaped space next to her. She's gone. She tentatively slid her hand across the empty space, relieved to find that it was still warm. Jade could only just have left, which meant she hadn't bailed for the sofa during the night. She might be packing her bags right now, though. There was a clatter from the kitchen and she relaxed. Breakfast. What _was_ it with that girl? She stroked her stomach in case an extra twenty or thirty pounds was lurking there waiting to pop a button as soon as she put her pants on, but found nothing untoward. She rolled over. If Jade had only just started cooking, she'd have another ten minutes at least.

 _Or you could, you know, get up and help_ , said a little voice.

 _She doesn't need help. I'd only be in the way._

 _And that's your best response to last night, is it?_

Last night.

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She barrelled into the kitchen, almost colliding with the ironing board. "Hi," she said, belated patting her hair down and trying to make herself presentable.

Jade was already eating. "Hi." She waved a fork at the place she'd set for Tori.

"What? Oh, thanks." Tori scraped her chair noisily back and forth, trying to give herself time to think. "So..." she said, and realised she had absolutely no idea what to say next. "Did you... sleep all right?"

Jade looked up, with a shy smile. "Yes, I did," she said. "Thanks."

"Oh. Good." Tori found herself blushing. "Good."

"Did you?"

"Me? Yes. Yes I did."

They ate in silence for a moment.

"Ketchup?"

"Here."

A little more silence.

"This is nice," Tori offered, brightly. "What is it?"

Jade looked from Tori to the plate and back again, and sighed. "It's scrambled eggs, Tori." She put her fork down. "Just like it was yesterday. Look," she said. "I get that this is mortally embarrassing for both of us, okay? I don't know what to say, and neither do you. And you're _good_ at this stuff. So how about this. Let's just finish our breakfast in peace, and tonight we'll get a couple of bottles of wine, get smashed, and talk about it. Deal?"

Tori sagged in relief. "Deal."

"Good."

Tori ate for a moment, content with a truce, until a memory snagged her attention.

"Can I just ask you something?"

Jade groaned. "How come as soon as we've agreed something, you want to change it?"

"It's just... Why did you go back to the sofa?"

"I..." Jade looked embarrassed. "I just thought you might be more comfortable, that's all."

"More comfortable? Why would you think I wasn't comfortable? I like to sleep next to you."

"Okay, well that's great then. No problem."

"Did you think I didn't?"

"No."

"Then why go?"

"Can we just forget it?"

"Please, Jade. I worried all day and half the night that I'd upset you. That you thought that I'd... assaulted you or something."

"Well I think we just proved you didn't."

"But you still got up."

"What?"

"Last night. You got up."

"To take a wazz!"

"And you needed a pillow?"

Jade flinched, guiltily.

"Come _on,_ Jade," Tori said. "Tell me. Why would you want to go back to the sofa? Is it me? Do I wriggle or something?"

"No, of course not. It's just..."

"What?"

Jade sighed and stared at her plate. "It's just habit, I guess. I forgot where I was."

"But I've never..." It took a few moments for it to sink in. _It's not you she's talking about_. "Marcus?" she said.

"Yes."

"He used to make you sleep on the _sofa_?"

"No," Jade said. "It wasn't like that. It was just... I used to want to be away from him. You know." She squirmed, uncomfortably. "Afterwards."

"After...?"

Jade nodded.

"But why?"

"Please, Tori, let's not do this right now."

"Why?" she insisted.

"I thought we had a deal." There was a strain in Jade's voice that Tori should have heeded, but didn't.

"Why?"

"I don't-"

" _Tell me!_ "

"I didn't want him to see me _cry_ , Tori," Jade snapped, bitterly. "Do you get it? I didn't want him to see what he'd _done_ to me, what he'd reduced me to. Okay?" She slammed her fork onto the table. "Happy now?"

Tori sat stunned, staring into Jade's eyes, dark and defiant with unshed tears. "Oh, Jade," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well," Jade said, brusquely, grabbing for Tori's plate to clear it away. "Now you know. So go get ready for work. You're going to be late."

"But-"

"Please. Just go."

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Tori stood at work, notepad on the counter, One Waitress In Search Of Some Customers. She stared around the empty diner. Sometimes she wondered if she was trapped inside one of those awful existential plays that Jade used to take her to, where everyone's doomed to do everything forever and it's all bleak and meaningless, and there's no singing or interval and you really need to pee. Hell is other people. Although right now, some other people might be nice - at the moment Hell was just _her_.

The giggling from the kitchen reminded her that that wasn't quite true. In her case, Hell was a very _specific_ set of other people.

She cursed herself for not having listened this morning, for not having shut up when she had the chance. Jade had promised they'd talk, but she'd pushed it, and now that promise lay shattered. She'd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, turned her own birthday cake to dust, and now when she closed her eyes all she could see was a vision that made her sick to the stomach – a lost and tearful Jade, hand pressed over her mouth to stifle the sobs, endlessly slinking from someone else's bed to weep unseen in the darkness.

Slowly, carefully, she probed the corners of her soul to see if there was any trace of the treacherous sense of comeuppance that had taken her by surprise when Jade had first arrived, any sense of satisfaction that Jade's decision had led her to this, any pleasure in her fall, and discovered nothing. Whatever tiny spark of revenge she'd fostered was extinguished.

 _I can fix this. I can make it right._

All she had to do was...

The door jangled, and she looked up with a start to see Jade in the doorway, as though summoned by the thought itself. She made no move to come in, and they stood for a moment, unspeaking, across the expanse of the diner floor.

"I'm sorry." It was Jade who spoke first, her voice cracked and hoarse. "About this morning."

"Jade..."

"I know you're only trying to help. I had no right to be angry."

"You don't need to apologize for anything."

Jade looked at her for a moment. "I need to apologize for a lot of things, Tori," she said, quietly.

"Look, why don't you come in and-"

Jade shook her head. "No," she said. "I'll see you back at the apartment." She gave a sad little smile, and was gone before Tori could say goodbye, leaving her alone and uneasy in the diner. _The apartment_ , she thought. _She didn't call it home._

But at least she said she'd be there.

She resolved to set things straight this evening. This morning had gone badly, but Jade had opened up a little. She'd buy some wine on the way home and maybe see if she could…

 _You're not cracking a safe, Tori. This isn't a game. This is someone's life._

But I need to know.

 _And what does she need to know about you?_

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.

.

Jade sat in the apartment, fretting over borrowed time. She looked at her bag, and at the sofa, and at the bedroom door. It would be so easy, she thought. She'd be upset, but she'd get over it.

 _You've got to jump one way or the other._ _Whatever happens you're going to lose. Does she have to lose with you?_

There was a knock at the door. She resolved to ignore it, it wouldn't be anything to do with her, and the last thing she wanted was interference. But the knocking grew louder, and more insistent, until she began to take it personally. She rose with a growl and opened the door.

"Can I help you?" she said, in a voice tipped with poison that had sent many an unwanted canvasser and girl scout scuttling for cover in the past. It didn't work this time. The figure on the other side of the doorway simply stared at her, coldly.

"Who the _hell_ are you?"

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 **To those of you still struggling bravely through 'Power Play', I apologize for yet again leaving a mystery visitor standing on the doorstep. It's a bad habit, I know.**


	8. Chapter 8 - Decisions, Decisions

**Hi, just a short one today, feel free to review and let me know if it's awful.**

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"I'm sorry?"

Everything about the woman on the other side of the doorway set Jade's teeth on edge. She was just the kind of haughty bitch that she despised. She checked her anger, and reminded herself that for all she knew this was Tori's boss, or her landlady, and it wouldn't do to unleash the demon. "Can I help you?"

"I _said_ ," the woman enunciated carefully, as though talking to a particularly slow child. "Who the hell are _you_?"

Jade tried not to simmer. "I'm a friend of Tori's," she said. "I'm staying for a couple of days."

The woman looked unimpressed. "I didn't know Tori _had_ any friends," she said, uncharitably.

"Well she does," Jade said. "And I'm one of them."

"Really?" She seemed skeptical. "Well I need to see her. Where is she?"

"Not here."

"I'd guessed that already," the woman said, irritably. "Otherwise I wouldn't be stood here having to talk to _you_. Where is she?"

"At work."

"I see." She looked at her watch. "Well I haven't got time for this. Tell her I was here." She turned to go.

"No."

The woman turned back. "No?"

"No," said Jade. "I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because _you_ haven't told me," she said patiently, "who the hell _you_ are."

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Tori spent the afternoon fretting. At least there were customers today, but that didn't really help.

 _It's all going to be fine_ , she thought, as she absent-mindedly poured coffee all over a small woman in a nasty dress.

"Watch what you're doing!"

"What? Oh, _God_ , I'm so sorry! I'll get you a cloth." She pulled out a handful of napkins. "No, wait, here, let me just..."

"I can _do_ it." The woman snatched the napkins away from her and dried herself off while Tori retreated to the safety of the counter. _Concentrate_ , Tori. You can't afford to lose this job. Especially not with the club still closed. She wouldn't look after you this time.

It was going to be a long day.

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Jade sat alone in the apartment. _Now_. _You have to decide now_. Before it all gets too complicated. She stared at the phone in her hand, scrolling the missed calls up into oblivion. How much time?

 _Not enough._

She stared at her rucksack, and made her decision.

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By the time the end of her shift rolled around, Tori was ready to throw herself into the garbage-disposal unit just to escape from the diner. She practically ran home, stopping off only to buy a bottle of wine, and realized guiltily that she couldn't remember the last time she'd paid for anything. She bounded up the steps to her apartment, clutching her bag and bottle, and let herself in...

.

... to an empty room. "Jade?" she called out hopefully. "Are you there?"

There was no response. She looked around and noticed to her horror that Jade's rucksack was missing from its place beside the sofa.

She's gone. _Again_.

Her hands fell dejectedly to her sides, and she stood, helpless, the bottle of wine barely held by her fingers, listening to the sound of an empty apartment.

There was a time when she'd have welcomed this, counted it a pleasure to come back from work to find no one home, a chance to spend some time alone before the arguments started. Now it was anathema, the silence only reinforcing how much, how _instantly_ , she missed Jade's presence there.

 _Where was she?_

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _Where was she?_ He put the phone down, and drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. He reached out to dial again and thought better of it. He'd send Karl round to the house later to check.

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"Hey," said a voice in her ear. She jumped, the bottle slipping from her finger, landing mercifully intact on the rug. She spun round to see Jade holding a carton of milk, looking at her with an odd expression. "Are you okay?"

"I... I thought you'd..."

"I just went out for some milk." Jade pushed past her into the room and disappeared into the kitchen. "I moved my stuff into your room," she called. "I hope you don't mind."

"Er..."

"I mean, say if it's a problem," she said, returning. "It's just that it was in the way, and I thought I'd try and keep the place tidy. It's okay, isn't it?"

"It's fine," Tori said. "Honestly."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Great." Jade's eyes dropped to the bottle on the floor. "You dropped something."

"Oh." Tori bent and picked it up, holding it close to her chest, more defensively than she meant to. "I just thought..."

"Tori Vega," Jade said, reproachfully, with a slight pout. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

"No!"

"And yet you come bearing alcohol, of a kind I like?"

Tori hesitated. It had been part of the deal, but the deal had been broken. She handed it over like a naughty child surrendering contraband candy. "It's just a bottle of _wine_ , Jade," she said, sulkily. "I thought it'd be nice, that's all. You know, with dinner."

Jade looked at her for a moment, and grabbed the bottle. "Okay, sounds great," she said. "What are you making?"

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Jade watched Tori's dinner preparations with the patience of a saint, struggling heroically not to interfere, while occasionally wincing as the other girl hacked haphazardly at vegetables with more enthusiasm than accuracy.

"Do you want any help?"

"No." Tori grunted, chasing an errant carrot across the worktop. "I'm good."

"Right."

Jade leaned back against the table and folder her arms. "You had a visitor today," she said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Some woman."

"What woman?"

"I dunno. Just some woman." She paused. "She said her name was Heather."

Tori's chopping slowed, then resumed more furiously than ever. "Did she say what she wanted?"

"Nope."

"Oh."

"I think she was lost."

"Right."

"Must have got the wrong apartment, or something."

"Probably."

"Because she said she was looking for her girlfriend."

Tori stopped chopping. Jade waited for a moment.

"You don't have to tell me, you know," she said, quietly.

"Jade..."

"I mean it's none of my business, but..."

"It's over." Tori's voice was hollow, and Jade heard the thump as the knife went down. "I _told_ her it was over. Weeks ago."

"Okay."

"I did!"

"I believe you."

Tori finally turned to face her. "Are you mad with me?"

Jade was surprised. "Mad with you?"

"For not saying anything."

"No, I'm not mad with you, Tori," she said. "If you've got a girlfriend..."

" _Had_ a girlfriend."

"... _had_ a girlfriend, then that's fine," she said. "I'm glad you moved on with your life, you know? I'm glad you haven't been on your own, that you… that you had someone else to open your pickle jars for you."

Tori looked at her. "Really?"

"No, of course not," Jade said, exasperated. "I hate the idea of you with someone else, just like you must have hated it when I went off with Marcus. But the point is I've no right to expect anything else. You don't owe me an explanation. You don't owe me _anything_. I left you in the lurch and now I've just walked back in here without even asking. I'm just an unwanted guest, and I know I'm only here because you can't bring yourself to turn me away."

"That's not true! I want you here."

"Do you?"

"Yes! I'd have thought after last night you'd know that."

Jade blushed slightly. "Well, maybe."

"Look, Jade, I get that right now you're feeling a bit insecure, okay? Wondering whether I'm just using you as a rebound to get over Heather, or just killing time until we get back together, or-"

"No. None of those things had occurred to me. Now I feel terrible."

"Shut up. What I'm saying is, it's not like that. Me and Heather, we were... _nothing_ , really. I don't even know why I liked her. She just came along at the right time. And now it's over, she moved out and-"

"She _lived_ here?"

"Well, yes." Tori said, uncomfortably. "For a while. She left her husband."

Jade pulled a horrified face. "Homewrecker!"

"Don't! I feel bad enough as it is."

"And so you should, enticing that delightful woman away from her family, leaving her tiny children alone and defenceless."

"She doesn't have children!"

"Really? She seemed like such a motherly type."

"You know nothing _about_ her!"

"No," said Jade. "I don't." She looked around the kitchen. "I don't feel like eating. I'm going to skip dinner."

Panic hit Tori. "Oh, no, Jade, come on. Don't be like-"

"And so are you. Grab a couple of glasses."

"I... what? Oh. Right."

"And a couple of bottles."

"A couple? I only bought one."

"There's another three in the cupboard."

"Three?"

"I figured if we were going to talk, we were going to need them."

"But _three_?"

"Well, then I figured if we were going to talk about the kind of things _you_ want to talk about, one of them was probably going to get broken. In fact," she decided, "now I know about Heather, maybe two."

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.

Not at the house, either. That wasn't right. He reached for his laptop and pulled up his bank account, scrolling through the recent withdrawals.

There? What was she doing back there?

This wouldn't do.

This wouldn't do at _all_.


	9. Chapter 9 - Out of Time

**Hi. My apologies for how long this has taken, but I have a dilemma – originally this was just going to be a short, bittersweet romance about love and betrayal, but now it seems to have gone off the rails slightly. So I 've decided to throw it open - who wants us to go back to the romance, and see them reconciled, and who wants to go off on an adventure, with bad guys, murder and intrigue - a bit like Power Play, but without all the weirdness. I'll leave it with you, if you have a preference, every vote counts ;)**

 **And again, all comments welcome, I appreciate you sticking with it.**

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"So," said Jade, rotating her glass carefully. "Tell me about Heather."

Tori pulled a face. She didn't really want to talk about Heather, but it looked as though this was a _quid pro quo_ deal, and if she didn't give, she didn't get. "Not much to tell, really," she said. "I met her in the diner. She used to come in a couple of times a week, and we got talking."

"And you thought, _she'll do, I'll move her right in_."

"No! It wasn't like that. She was having a few problems at home, and then one day she came in, all upset because she'd left him, and I offered her a place to stay."

"Ah, I get it."

"Yes."

"So once you'd lured her back to your place with promises of chai and sympathy, you pounced..."

"Jade!"

"What? That's what you did to me."

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 _That afternoon, in a small apartment. Late sun through the window, specks of dust dancing in the light. The spoils of a shopping trip strewn across the furniture, two girls talking, laughing, a friendship that had seemed unthinkable at school. Two girls sat side by side on a sofa, apparently comfortable and content with each other, one of them entirely unaware of the tumultuous decision being made, of the Rubicon being crossed, only inches away from her, as put her cup on the table and leaned back in easy silence. Unaware until she turned to find herself lost in dark brown eyes, dizzyingly close, and felt the ghost of a kiss across her lips..._

 _._

 _._

 _._

"I didn't!"

"There I was, thinking we were having a nice girlie chat over a cup of cocoa, and before I knew it, you were having your wicked way with me over the credenza. I'm surprised you didn't lose your deposit."

"That's not how it happened!"

"Actually that would sound a lot funnier if you were a guy."

"Jade, please!" Tori said. "Don't say it was like that. I thought it was really special. Don't spoil it for me."

"Oh, come on. I was only kidding."

"Well don't. I don't want to feel like I pounced on you. I like to think you _wanted_ it." She paused. "You did, didn't you?" she said, with a trace of doubt.

"Of course I wanted it," Jade said. "Why would you...? Is that why you were all weird about the other night?" she said. "Because you think you forced me into something?"

"I-"

"It is, isn't it?" Jade laughed. "I hate to ruin your image as a 'femme fatale', Tori, but you certainly didn't force me into it. You just took me by surprise, that's all."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And to be honest, I don't know why. I should have been expecting it."

"What do you mean?"

"You had the hots for me in school."

"I did not!"

"Yeah, you did."

"What makes you think that?"

"You don't remember that night after Trina's crappy TV show?"

"No," Tori lied.

"Oh," said Jade. "Well, there I was, laying on the sofa minding my own business, and you started fondling my legs, and..."

"I did not!" Tori said, hotly. "You put your legs on me! I had no choice."

"So you _do_ remember it?"

...Well, yes," she said. "But I wasn't fondling. I was just... resting my arms."

"Uh-huh."

"I was! And why did you put your feet up anyway?"

"I dunno," Jade admitted. "It just felt right. Another drink?"

.

.

.

"I didn't leave you because I didn't _love_ you, Tori. You have to believe that."

"Don't."

"What?"

"I don't want to hear it. All that 'it's not you, it's me' stuff. I know why you left me, I'm not an idiot."

"Tori..."

"It's nothing new, Jade. It happens all the time. And it doesn't matter how much you dress it up, how much you try to make me feel better about it, the truth is, you got bored. Trapped. You got sick of looking after me, running around after me, being the guy..."

"Will you stop with the 'guy' bit! Nobody was the 'guy', we were just us."

"...and then there was the college thing."

There was an uneasy silence. Leaving college had always been the elephant in the room. Jade had put her career on hold to work full-time to support them, and then Tori had dropped out, leaving them in debt and out of options, and she'd never been able to bring herself to tell Jade why.

"It wasn't the college thing."

"But it didn't help, did it? The thing is," Tori said, "I don't blame you in some ways, you know? Stuck doing that crappy little job, day after day, scraping through, thinking it's never going to change, and then Marcus comes along with his fancy car and his expensive suit and tells you he's going to make you a star. I wish that would happen to me."

There was a horrible silence.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"It's fine."

"But the point is, I don't-"

There was a heavy rapping at the door, of a tone that Jade had recently come to know quite well.

"You'd better answer that."

"They'll go away."

"No she won't."

"What do you-"

"Trust me."

Tori sighed in frustration, and went to the door. She opened it to find the worst possible visitor on the other side.

"I've come to talk."

She felt an almost uncontrollable urge to just slam the door and pretend this wasn't happening. "Heather," she hissed. "This is _really_ a bad time." She moved to try and block the other woman's view into the apartment, which only served to make it worse.

"Is she here?"

"Who?"

"Your friend."

"She..." There was no sense in denying it. "Yes."

"Well that didn't take long."

"Heather!"

"Is everything okay?" Jade's voice drifted across from the sofa. Tori made the mistake of turning to look at her, and the next thing she knew Heather was through the door. Jade rose to put them on an equal footing, and the two of them stood, simmering in mutual enmity, while Tori wondered if she were stuck in some kind of horrible hidden-camera show.

Finally Heather broke away and turned to Tori. "Could we talk? In private?" There was a slight tilt of the head towards Jade, as though to imply she were an inconvenient stranger.

"No, Heather, we can't," she said. "If you think you can just come round here and-"

"Please?"

There was a little note of genuine pleading in her voice, and Jade knew, even before Tori turned to her, that she was going to give in. She rolled her eyes and sighed. "I'll be in the bedroom," she said, and headed off, ignoring Tori's mouthed apology.

Heather tapped her foot impatiently until Jade was out of sight. "Tori, look-"

"Not here," Tori said, with a last glance at the bedroom door. "In the kitchen."

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Jade sat cross-legged on Tori's bed, feeling the particular streak of despondency that comes from listening to your lover bickering with their ex - a cruel reminder that they once shared a life with someone else, made particularly poignant by the fact that it was _her_ fault, she was the one who left. She tried to picture them, living together in this apartment, an apartment that she still secretly thought of as hers, going through all the little routines of daily life, sitting snuggled up on the sofa watching TV, laughing, going to bed...

She tried to stop that thought right there, but it was too late. Heather and Tori together in bed. This bed. _Her_ bed.

The tears, when they came, were hot with guilt, as she realized how Tori must have felt when she left, how many nights she must have spent crying, the long, dark hours with nothing to do but think about her girlfriend with someone else, imagining...

It was no consolation to tell herself that on those nights she'd been crying too, that somewhere in the darkness their tears might have mingled, that they might have reached out to comfort each other, if only in their dreams.

Because whatever Tori had imagined, she couldn't have imagined _that_.

She strained to hear their conversation, but the voices were muffled, audible but indistinct. Which was probably a blessing.

.

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"I gave up everything for you!"

"No you didn't! You'd already left him!"

"But I could have gone back!"

"Then why didn't you?"

"Because you told me you loved me!"

"I..." Tori prayed that Jade wasn't listening. "I did."

"Then why break it off?"

"It wasn't _working_ , Heather. All we did was fight all the time."

"No we didn't!"

"Don't you remember what it was like?"

It was apparent that Heather didn't. "I don't know what you mean! We were happy, weren't we? Well, I was."

"But I wasn't!" Tori snapped. "And if you'd ever thought about anything other than sex and money, you'd have noticed."

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Jade's phone rang. She ignored it, as she'd been ignoring it for weeks. She knew who it was.

.

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"I didn't-"

"Yes you did! You used to treat me like _crap_ , bossing me about, like this was _your_ place."

" _Our_ place."

" _My_ place, Heather. This was _my_ place."

"So, what, I was just here on probation? I didn't come up to scratch?"

"Don't you dare! After everything I did for you-"

"I'm sorry, Tori," Heather's tone became less strident, conciliatory. "You're right. I was inconsiderate. It wouldn't be like that again, I promise. Just give me a chance to prove it. I love you, Tori."

.

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The unanswered call was followed immediately by a text, as it always was. She glanced at it.

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"No, Heather."

"What? I don't deserve even a chance?"

"It's not that _simple_ , now."

"Why not?"

"Well..."

"Is it her? That little tramp out there?"

"Heather!"

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Ten seconds later she finished retching over the bowl in the bathroom. No. No, no, no. This wasn't supposed to happen. She sank to the floor. Oh God. She sat with her feet pressed against the door, staring at the phone, fighting the panic. _Who to call?_

 _Karl. Karl would know._ She flicked through the contacts and brought up the number.

"Hey, Karl? Karl, it's me. Listen... Yeah, I know he is. Is he still in... What? Well how early is 'early'? Oh Jesus. Fuck. Look, Karl, we never had this conversation, okay? Just give me... Please, Karl, come on, I'm begging here... Thanks. I owe you one. Bye."

She shut the phone down, letting it slip from her fingers, balling her fists and pressing them hard into her eyes. _You stupid little girl._ _Now look what you've done_. She could hear Tori's voice from the kitchen, defending her vociferously. She almost wept to think what she'd do when she found out. And yet there was nothing else she could do. She had to get to get to him before….

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"There's nothing else to say, Heather."

"Well I think there is! _Please_ , Tori..."

"No!"

Tori held the kitchen door open, impatiently, until Heather reluctantly went through it. "So that's it?" she said. "That's all I get?"

"Goodbye, Heather."

"I'll call you-"

"Don't."

The look on Heather's face was so devastated that Tori felt she had to say something. "Look, Heather, I'm sorry, okay?" she said, quietly. "It's just not going to work out. You need to move on. We both do."

It was probably a mistake. "Yes, well, that's easy for you to say," Heather said, coldly. "You've already moved on."

"It's not-"

But Heather was gone. Tori closed the door behind her, thankfully. She took a deep breath to quell the queasiness that confrontation always brought out in her, picked up the last unopened bottle, and headed towards the bedroom to make amends.

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Thirty seconds later, the bottle hit the wall in a shower of broken glass, its destiny fulfilled. But by that time, Jade West was already on the freeway, heading East, the taste of bitter ashes in her mouth.

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	10. Chapter 10 - The Die is Cast

**Hi there! Well, the people have spoken, so let's see where we're going to go. There will still be romance, rest assured, but it's not going to be as easy for our girls as they thought…**

 **Please feel free to review, it keeps the wheels of industry turning ;)**

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Jade drove faster than she should, hands clenched on the wheel. Stupid. _Stupid_. How could she have thought it would turn out any other way? If she made it back before he did, if she was there when he got back, maybe she could pass it off as a mistake, distract him before he made plans. She did some quick calculations. He wouldn't spend much time at the airport - he never checked any bags, he had everything he needed at either end of the journey. And besides, he didn't like to stand in line with the plebs. So give him a couple of hours on the road...

It was going to be tight. Very tight. But she didn't have any other choice.

She couldn't risk him coming to find her. She could still see the text, burned in negative on the inside of her lids. No punctuation. All caps.

 _._

 _I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE_

 _._

How? How had he even known? The _money_. Of course. He was obsessive about the fucking money. She'd only used the account because she'd wanted to pay her way. Hadn't wanted to look desperate in front of Tori. But of course he'd check it as soon as he knew she was gone.

What if he _didn't_ go home? Shit. What if he was so mad he went straight to Tori's place? She could see him now, sat in the back seat, with Karl at the wheel, pulling on the black leather gloves. She could picture Tori opening the door without a thought, being shoved roughly inside, confused, crying, begging, the sickening crunch of a fist...

No, he wouldn't do that. Not yet. Otherwise he wouldn't have sent the text. He wanted her to suffer first. He wanted her to go home of her own accord, knowing she had no choice, knowing what was in store for her. He'd want her to walk in there and lay right down and take it, knowing what he'd do if she didn't.

She stared ahead at the road. Just a flick of the wheel would do it. Down the banking into the trees. They probably wouldn't find her for days. No one would be sorry. Not now.

But even that wouldn't help. He'd think she was still there. She imagined herself laying in the wreckage, dying, unnoticed, while Marcus drove past in grim serenity on his way towards the apartment.

She pulled the car off into a rest stop, and sat for a moment, head on the wheel. He knew she'd go home. She had to. But there was no hurry now. She could never outrun her mistakes.

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Karl sat behind the wheel, his eyes flickering nervously toward the rear-view mirror. He'd worked for Marcus a long time, and he'd never lied to him. He'd never dared.

But he _liked_ Jade. He liked her, and he'd never been comfortable with the way Marcus treated her. Of course, there'd been others before her, and it pricked what remained of his conscience to think that he'd never protected _them_ , never even noticed them, until it was time for them to take the long drive down to the hotel on Magdalen Avenue. But Jade seemed different. That was why he'd turned away so many times, made excuses not to be at the 'parties', drunk himself to sleep so he couldn't hear the crying.

And that was why, when Marcus asked if he'd heard from her, he hesitated.

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Tori lay face down on the bed, the dregs of the last bottle beside her, the broken glass of its predecessor undisturbed by the door. She'd gone. She'd walked out again.

Because of Heather? Had she assumed that Tori would just turn around and take Heather back, there and then? She couldn't believe that. They'd been so close to the truth, so near to reconciliation, that Tori had already privately decided that in the morning she'd ask her if she wanted to give it another chance. But Jade couldn't have wanted that. She must have been packing her things while they were in the kitchen. Had she just been waiting for the chance, seen Heather as an excuse to bolt?

None of it seemed right. None of it seemed to fit. Her anger started to subside. What if Jade had been called away by an emergency? Maybe a family crisis. Would she pack? Maybe.

She hadn't called her. She crawled off the bed, bleary and unfocussed, and searched for her phone. She pulled up Jade's number and dialled. It rang and went to voicemail. She wasn't entirely sure what it was that she wanted to say, so she shut it off again. Water. She needed water.

.

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.

 _Go to her._ The words arrived in her head as though from a distant planet. _Go to her._

I can't. I have to go home.

 _And what will you do then? Stay there forever? Or until he gets tired of you, uses you up, kicks you out of the door with nothing, with your life and your looks gone? Will you go to her then? Press your face up against her window, watch her happy with someone else, turn away knowing it's too late?_

He'll come after me. He'll come after _her_.

 _He might anyway. And she'll be safer if you're there._

She won't.

 _You always looked after her._

And now I've put her in danger.

 _She was always in danger. That's why you stayed. Go to her. Tell her everything. Throw yourself on her mercy._

Mercy?

 _She's the only one who'll show you any._

.

.

.

"Had she been at the house?"

"Hard to say, Boss. There was food in, the bed was made. Maybe she's staying with friends."

"She doesn't have any friends."

"Family?"

"She doesn't have any family, either. Not now. I _know_ where she is, Karl. That's not the problem."

"Oh. Then what-"

"The question is, what shall we _do_ about it?"

.

.

.

Call her. She should call her first. She reached into her bag.

.

.

.

Tori padded past the sofa with a glass of water. Her head was clearer now. She decided to try Jade again.

She put the phone to her ear, and waited until it rang, feeling a strange echoing sensation as she realized there was a simultaneous ringing from the bathroom. It took her a moment to work out what that meant. Jade's phone was in the bathroom. Was Jade in there too? Had she even looked? She had a sudden panic attack as she thought of Jade unconscious on the bathroom floor, or worse, bleeding out from some desperate suicide attempt. She dropped her own phone on the sofa and ran to the door, pushed it open.

No blood. No Jade. Just the phone, laying the middle of the floor.

She picked it up, and swiped the screen. Unusually for someone so secretive, it had no lock on it.

Her own calls were there, of course, and above…

The same number, over and over again. Dozens of them. She scrolled up in wonder.

.

.

.

Jade swerved off the freeway at the next exit, and caught it again in the opposite direction. No phone. Damn it. She'd have to go in cold, and bear the brunt of Tori's anger. What in God's name was she going to say to her? _Hi, Tori. I'm back. Oh, and by the way, I've just fucked up your life_. But at least she'd have time, time to explain, make it right. Marcus wouldn't come yet. He'd know she wouldn't be expecting him for another few days, he'd let her stew for a while. That was his thing. He'd want to wait. She had plenty of time. Unless...

 _Unless Karl told him she'd called._

The panic hit like a tidal wave. She pressed the pedal down hard, and swore and swore and swore.

.

.

.

Karl relaxed. The danger had passed. All he had to do was get Marcus home, and his transgression would never come to light. If Jade had any sense she'd run, far and fast. His boss would lose interest soon enough.

"You know something, Karl? I don't think we'll go home just yet."

Damn it. "No problem, Boss. Where to?"

.

.

.

 _Marcus_. Of course. She looked at the last call from his number. Two hours ago. Exactly the time she'd been arguing with Heather. She sank down on to the sofa. He'd called, and Jade had packed her bags and gone. She tried to imagine what he could have said, what magic he must have worked to persuade her. She'd never met him, but in her head Marcus was a seductive deceiver, a suave snake, venomous fangs hidden behind an easy charm. The idea that Jade could fall for that, _prefer_ it, galled her beyond belief. She felt her anger bubbling up again, and she looked back at the phone. She was about to go through the texts, when she noticed the voicemail alert was showing. Guiltily she activated it.

Her own silent message was there, and then three days ago...

She listened, and tears started to fall.

.

.

.

Karl didn't recognize the address. He'd driven the boss practically everywhere, knew all his secrets, but this was something he wasn't privy to, and he had a horrible feeling that the danger was still very much clear and present. _I know where she is..._

.

.

.

She passed the airport intersection, and realised that the die was cast. There was nothing she could do. Marcus was either ahead of her, or he'd join the freeway behind her. She accelerated as much as she dared. Karl was a stickler for the speed limits - she'd never catch him, but if he was behind her she could at least give herself a head start.

.

.

.

There was nothing remarkable in the message. It was terrible in its banality, a simple enquiry, the kind of message you might leave for someone who's late for dinner. There was no pleading, or threatening, no apology or explanation, it was just as though…

He doesn't know.

She never left him at all.

.

.

.

She pulled off the freeway and headed down the ramp, hands shaking. She could still remember the first time. The moment she realized that things were not going to be the way she'd thought they would. Could still feel his hand running through her hair, suddenly tightening, yanking her head back. The look in his eyes and the ice in her stomach.

 _Living on borrowed time. But borrowed from who?_

.

.

.

Tori slumped over on her side, arms wrapped tightly around her, cold comfort that meant nothing. It was all lies. She'd never left him. So why had she come at all? What did she want? A fling? An affair? A cheap holiday in someone else's misery?

 _A break from the pain_ , a tiny part of her said. But what if even _that_ was a lie?

She wouldn't. She just _wouldn't_. Her pain had been real, Tori could feel it, could see it in her eyes when she spoke.

And that just made it worse, she told herself. Because that's what she's chosen.

Over you.

.

.

.

"Nearly there, boss."

"Good, Karl. Very good."

.

.

.

Tori made her mind up. _No more._ She went to the bedroom and dragged open the drawer where she kept the box, pulled it out and turned it upside down over the bed. The photographs, the gifts, the notes. The things she'd kept, the things that had made up her last, irrational hope that someday, _somehow_ , things would be right again. Heather had never found them. And now no one ever would.

She scooped everything up in her arms and headed, resolute, towards the kitchen. The garbage disposal was almost too good for them.

.

She was halfway there, when she heard a heavy pounding at the door.

.

.

.

 **I see a bad moon rising...**


	11. Chapter 11 - Pascal's Wager

**Hi. Welcome back!** **So, who made it to the apartment first? Marcus or Jade? Let's find out.**

 **All reviews welcome, I hope our slight change of direction hasn't put you off.**

.

.

.

The pounding went on. Tori put her hands to her temples. Opening this door had brought her nothing but trouble recently, and the temptation to ignore it was intense.

.

.

.

"There's no answer."

"Break it down."

.

.

.

The possibility that it might be Jade crossed her mind, but not even Jade would have the bare-faced cheek to come back after this. She should just go back to bed.

.

.

.

"Are you sure, Boss?"

"If you ask me that again, Karl, I'm gonna bust it open with your face. Now do it."

.

.

.

It didn't sound as though it was going to stop, though, and Tori's growing fury demanded a sacrifice.

.

.

.

Karl put his muscular shoulder to the door, and braced himself. Whoever was on the other side of that door was...

.

.

.

... going to be very, very sorry, she decided. She clenched her fists, and crossed the room.

.

.

.

The lock gave with a crack, the tearing of splintered wood, and they were in.

.

.

.

 _A journey interrupted. A destination unplanned. An unsuspecting girl._

 _An empty apartment._

 _._

 _Living on borrowed time. But borrowed from who?_

 _._

 _._

 _._

"There's nobody here, Boss."

"Fuck."

.

.

.

 _Thirty minutes earlier..._

.

The slap left Jade's teeth rattling. It wasn't the first time she'd been slapped, and it wasn't the worst, but it had the terrible weight of betrayal behind it.

"Tori..." she croaked.

"How could you?" Tori snarled. "You little... _bitch_."

"I'm sorry, I can explain-"

"No you _can't_!" Tori thrust the phone in Jade's face. "Not this time! I've listened to the messages, Jade," she said. "You never left him at _all_ , did you?"

"I did, I-"

"He didn't even know you were gone! What was all this? Hmm? You got bored, did you? Thought you'd get a bit of action? Thought, hey, Tori hasn't had a bunk-up in a while, I'll drop over there, give her a thrill. Let her think she's in with a chance."

"No!"

"You lied to me, Jade."

"It wasn't like that!"

"Oh, _please_."

"Tori, I don't have time for this!"

"Oh, _I'm_ sorry!" Tori said, outraged. "Got somewhere to be, have you? Got to get back and fix dinner, now _Marcus_ has clicked his fingers?"

"No! Damn it, Tori, didn't you read the messages?"

"What?"

Jade snatched the phone and shoved it back in Tori's face. "Read the _phone_ , Tori," she said.

Tori looked at it, finally focussing in on the last message. Her eyes went wide. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It _means_ , Tori," Jade said, "that he knows where I am."

"Well that's not _my_ problem."

"Yes it _is_. Because he's going to come looking for me, and when he does, we are both going to be in deep shit."

"What do you mean?"

Do you have any idea," Jade said, "what's going to happen if he finds us? What he'll do? It won't just be _me_ that gets hurt, Tori. Maybe you're _fine_ with that. But he'll hurt you, too. He'll hurt you _first_ , because that's the way he thinks. We have to get out of here."

"The _hell_ we do. I'm calling the cops."

"We don't have time for that! For all I know he's in the parking lot right now. We need to go!"

"No!"

"Look, you can hate me all you like once this is all over, but if something happens to you, I'll never forgive myself."

"Well that makes two of us."

They stood glaring at each other, Tori's fury battling against a slow dawning of common sense - if she believed Jade, the very worst that could happen was that she'd feel pretty stupid if she was wrong, whereas the alternative was the ironic and potentially fatal embarrassment of being caught here still arguing about it if it turned out she was right. She made her choice. "Okay, fine," she muttered. "Give me a minute."

"What? Where are you going?" But Tori was gone, into the bedroom. Jade waited, hopping anxiously from foot to foot, until she returned with a small travel bag.

"Thank God for that. Right, we need to-"

But Tori was gone again, into the kitchen. "For Christ's _sake_ , Tori! We don't... What's that?"

"My housekeeping money."

"He's not going to rob you!"

"I don't know how long I'm going to be away, thanks to _you_ ," Tori said, sharply. "I'm going to need money."

"But I'll... Right okay. Let's go."

They left the apartment, Tori carefully, and in Jade's opinion, slowly locking the door behind them. They took the stairs, peering over the bannister at each flight, wary of someone coming up. There was no sign of Marcus, and they slipped out of the building unmolested.

.

.

.

"Get in."

"I'll get in when I'm ready, thank you."

"And when's _that_ going to be? Come on, Tori, I'm not messing about here."

Tori gave an irritated grunt, and pulled open the car door. "This is ridiculous."

Jade jumped in and started the engine, pulling out of the parking lot with a sharp swerve that earned her no favors from her passenger.

They'd only been driving for a couple of minutes when Jade pulled in towards an ATM. She muttered something under her breath and got out of the car, and Tori watched as she stabbed furiously as the machine, snatching notes from its maw as though it might change its mind at any moment. She got back in the car, cursing.

"What's wrong?"

"He hasn't cancelled my card."

"And that's bad?"

"It means he doesn't care that I'm using it."

"So what? Maybe he doesn't care about the money."

"He cares very _much_ about money, Tori," Jade said. "A lot more than he ever cared about _me_. If he's not bothered about me taking it, it means he doesn't think I'm going to have much time to spend it."

.

.

.

"Now what?"

"I'm thinking."

"We could just let it go?" Karl said, hopefully, and immediately regretted it, because Marcus smiled, and that didn't bode well for anyone.

"No, Karl. We're not going to let it go," he said. "Because that would be no fun at all."

"Fun?"

"Take me home."

.

.

.

"Okay," Jade said, once they were on the move again. "We should check into a motel for the night, and then in the morning we'll think about-"

"No."

"What?"

"I'm not going _anywhere_ with you."

"But I thought-"

"You thought what?" Tori snapped. "That you could bundle me out of my apartment in the middle of the night with some half-assed story about your psycho boyfriend, and we'd drive off and live happily ever after in some shitty little motel somewhere? You can drive me to my mom's."

"Oh come on, Tori, at least give me chance to-"

"No! You _lied_ to me, Jade. You lied to me and left me. Twice. What in God's name makes you think I'll ever trust you again? As far as I'm concerned you deserve everything you get."

They both knew that it was a step too far, but Tori's anger had driven her to it and now she couldn't bring herself to back down, even in the face of Jade's horrified stare. A word, anything, might have helped, but it didn't come, and after a moment Jade calmly and quietly hit the turn signal, changing lanes to head towards Tori's parents' house. Tori knew that when Jade drove carefully it meant she was very, very angry, but her own fury was still too raw to fully appreciate Jade's, and she said nothing more, folding her arms in steely defiance, bolstering her righteousness by focussing on the sheer unfairness of it all. She'd already done this, she'd played this game, she'd cried herself to sleep too many nights, until finally she'd swallowed her pride enough to consider spending the rest of her life with this woman, only to have her run away again. And now she was back, just long enough to tear her life apart, and send her scrambling out of her own apartment like a fugitive. This wasn't _her_ Jade. This wasn't the Jade she loved, that had looked after her, _protected_ her. _This_ Jade brought nothing but pain and fear. Ashes and broken glass.

The drive was only a couple of hours, but it was the second-longest one of Tori's life. The silence in the car was suffocating, but she didn't dare break it by moving to open the window. She kept shooting sideways glances at Jade, but the other girl stared resolutely at the road, her face expressionless except for the slight shine to her eyes that said the future held tears, and as the journey wore on, Tori found her anger stagnating, curdling, leaving a sour taste in her mouth.

"I'm sorry," she said, suddenly. "About before. I shouldn't have said that."

"No, you're right, Tori." Jade said, quietly. "You're absolutely right. I deserve everything I get."

"No you don't."

A silence which was neither acceptance or denial sat heavy in the air, and finally drove Tori to distraction.

" _Why_ , Jade?"

"What?"

"Why would you go back to him?" she said. "Why would you stay with him in the _first_ place if he's as bad as you say he is?"

"It's not as _simple_ as that, Tori."

"Well it should be!"

"Well it isn't!"

"Then tell me! Maybe I'd understand! Or am I too stupid, is that it? Poor little Tori's too stupid to understand the big, grown-up world?"

"No!"

"You know, half your fucking problem is that you'd never talk to me."

"Language, Tori! And anyway, I did talk to you."

"No you didn't! If you'd talked to me, maybe none of this would have happened in the first place!"

"What do you mean?"

"If you'd told me you weren't happy six _months_ ago," Tori said, "maybe we could have done something about it. Maybe I could have changed."

"You didn't need to change!"

"Well clearly I _did_! Because you obviously weren't happy with who I was, otherwise you wouldn't have left me for some fucking lunatic, and we wouldn't be sat here having this argument on the run from our own fucking apartment!"

"I'm going to fix it!"

"It's always _'I'm going to fix it'_!" Tori said, angrily. "That's the other half of your fucking problem! It was always _you_ , wasn't it? You were always the big 'I am', you were always going to take care of things, with your stompy boots and your bad attitude, and I'd just sit at home like a simpering fucking idiot. If you didn't keep shutting me out, maybe I could help!"

"You just said you didn't _want_ to help!"

"Well I do _now_!"

There was a pause. "Really?"

"Yes! So you just turn this fucking car around," Tori said, in a low growl. "And take me to whatever horrible little shit-hole you can afford, and we will sort this _out_ , Jade. You and _me_. And you will be totally honest with me, for the first time in your life."

.

.

.

 _Marcus sat in the darkness of the screening room, one hand wrapped around a tumbler of Scotch, the other busy elsewhere, and wondered how long he should wait. How long to give it before he destroyed her._

 _._

 _A week, he thought. Maybe two. He was a busy man, after all._

.

.

.

 **For those of you interested in the** _ **longest**_ **drive of Tori's life, you'll find it in 'Power Play', chapter 30…**


	12. Chapter 12 - Out of the Frying Pan

**Hi, welcome back. I'm sorry I can't update as often as I'd like, but I'm trying to keep both stories going at the same time. Bear with me, we'll get there eventually.**

 **If I ever write another story, I promise it won't have all these cliffhangers and shenanigans in it, it'll be romance all the way.**

 **Let me know if you like it, feel free to review, I always appreciate your comments.**

 _._

 _._

 _._

The room in the motel was clean and spacious, if you were a agoraphobic ant with personal hygiene issues. For two normal human beings, however, it was cramped and horrible, and made worse by the fact that it only had one bed in it. The girls sidled in, trying not to touch anything.

Jade took one look at the bed and dropped her rucksack. "I'll sleep on the floor," she said.

"Don't be ridiculous," Tori said. "We can share the bed." She prodded it and sniffed, doubtfully.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure, Jade. There's plenty of space."

"I just thought that maybe-"

"I'm mad with you, Jade, but making you sleep on the floor isn't really going to solve things."

"Oh. Okay." Jade lifted one boot off the carpet with a sticky squeak. "Thanks."

They stood, unsure of what to do next. Storm clouds were gathering, but the lightning had yet to find a conductor.

"Look, I know you're pretty upset right now…"

"Why, whatever gives you _that_ idea?" Tori's exasperation spilled over into sarcasm. "First you leave me without a word, and then, just when I'm getting over it, you turn up uninvited, sleep with me, make me think we might make a go of it, and run off back to your boyfriend. And _then_ , just to top it off, you abduct me from my apartment in the middle of the night because it turns out your boyfriend is a dangerous maniac who's not at all happy with the fact you've been cheating on him. I can't _imagine_ why you think I'd be upset."

"I'm really sorry."

"'Sorry' isn't going to fix it, Jade."

"I _know_." Jade shuffled her feet, dejectedly. "Maybe you _should_ go to your mom's."

"And do what? Sit there waiting until Marcus gets bored? I should really talk to my dad, he might be able to-"

"No! I mean, no. Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"Please, Tori, just give it a day. You'll be able to go home tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Tori said, surprised. "I thought I was on the run from some kind of green-eyed killing machine? Not a second to spare, you said. That's why you dragged me out of the apartment." Her eyes narrowed. "That _was_ true, wasn't it? God, please tell me you didn't make all this up to lure me to this dump for a night of mouldy motel sex."

"It was true."

"Then what's going to be different about tomorrow? What are you going to do?"

Jade said nothing, and looked away.

"Jade?"

"He'll leave you alone."

It took a few seconds for Tori to realize what she meant.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, _no_. That's not going to happen."

"It's the only way, Tori. "

"No!"

"I'll just... talk to him, sort things out."

"Bullshit."

"Tori!"

"If you could do that, we wouldn't be here. That's why you left tonight, isn't it?" Tori said. "To go back there so he could take it out on you and not come after _me_."

"I should never have got you involved."

"I'm already involved!" Tori exploded. "Even if he wasn't threatening me, do you really think I'd be happy to sit on my ass while it was happening to _you_?"

"You'd never have known!"

"I'd _want_ to know!" she snapped. "Don't treat me like a child. How do you think I'd feel, five years down the line, if I found out about this? That this had happened and I'd done nothing? It's bad enough finding out six months too late. You are not going anywhere near him again. That's final."

Jade was about to protest, but Tori's resolute face shut her down. She slumped on the edge of the bed.

"So…" she said, after a while.

"So...?"

"So, what are we going to do?"

Jade had never asked her this question before, but Tori was unable to relish the moment because she didn't have the faintest idea what the answer was.

"I don't know," she said. "But we'll think of something."

Jade sighed. "Why are you doing this, Tori?"

"What?"

"Helping me."

"Well it's not just _you_ , is it? I don't really have any choice. Well, I _do_ ," she said, "I could go to my dad and tell him I'm being stalked by a dangerous lunatic, but for some reason you don't want me to do that. So I guess I'm stuck with it. Anyway, what would _you_ do?"

"Me?"

"If I'd left you, and you found out I was in trouble, what would you do?"

They both knew the answer to that. Even when they'd been at school, Jade had shown a weirdly protective attitude towards her, which Tori had always attributed to the other girl simply wanting a monopoly on terror.

"That's different."

"Why?"

"Because you'd never have left me."

"What, never?" Tori said, raising an eyebrow. "That's a pretty major assumption."

"I mean you'd never have just gone off with someone. You'd have wanted to talk it out, first. You know… feelings and stuff. You'd have talked for a bit, yadda, yadda, and then you'd have realized how fabulous I was, and you'd have…"

"I nearly did, once, you know."

"… stayed. What?"

"I nearly left you."

Jade was startled. "When?"

"After the whole college thing."

"Why?"

"Because we were a _mess_ , Jade," Tori said. "I really thought it might be the best thing for both of us. You were so... _miserable_ all the time, I could see you hated me for letting you down, but you wouldn't talk about it. You just moped around, making me feel like shit. It went on for months."

"Oh come on, Tori! I was under a lot of stress, I didn't mean to..."

"I _know_ you didn't. And that just made it _worse_. It was like you were just tolerating me, like a child who doesn't know any better. I only stayed because it didn't seem fair to leave after what you'd done for me. And it did get better."

"Really?"

"Yes. But it would have got better a whole lot quicker if you'd talked to me."

"I guess."

"So go on."

"What?"

"Talk."

 _._

 _._

 _._

Tori lay still, trying not think about how many people had lain festering in this bed before her, and stared at the ceiling. She shouldn't do it. It would be wrong. Beside her, Jade lay on her side, facing away, her breathing deep and even. She wondered if the girl really _was_ sleeping, or just faking it to avoid any more talking. She listened carefully and detected, in the soft purr, a genuine oblivion.

But a temporary one. At least she could be thankful for that.

 _._

 _._

 _._

" _Why did you come back?"_

 _"Because I thought he was going to hurt you."_

 _"No, before that. When you came to stay."_

 _"I don't know. I... didn't think he'd find out. I never meant it to go so far, I just..."_

 _"Just what?"_

 _"Does it matter?"_

 _"Of course it matters."_

 _"I just..." Jade's gaze moved unconsciously to her rucksack. "I wanted to see you again, that's all. Just once more."_

 _"Once more before what?"_

 _Jade was still staring at her bag. "Nothing."_

 _"Once more before what, Jade?"_

 _"I..."_

 _"Jade!"_

 _"Nothing!"_

 _There was a tightness in her voice, and Tori had a terrible premonition. She sprang off the bed and grabbed the rucksack, pulling it open and upturning it over the bed._

 _"No!" Jade went belatedly for the bag, but Tori ignored her, shaking hard, as clothes and make-up and hairbrush tumbled out, followed finally by a clank, as two bottles hit the bed together. They both stared at them._

 _A quart bottle of liquor. And a small brown container._

 _Whiskey and sleeping pills._

 _._

 _._

 _._

Jade shuffled slightly in her sleep, a small mewling noise escaping her lips as she curled up tighter.

 _._

 _._

 _._

" _I don't understand."_

 _"Do you know what it feels like to be trapped, Tori? To let yourself be completed defeated by your own stupidity?"_

 _._

 _._

 _._

The temptation rose again, but she ignored it.

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _"I think I hated him right from the start," she said. "He was obsessive. Controlling. Cruel. As soon as I'd unpacked my case I knew it was all wrong."_

 _"Then why didn't you just come home? I'd have forgiven you. Eventually."_

 _"Because I couldn't bring myself to admit I'd made a mistake. That I'd been mad enough to walk out on you, to break your heart for nothing. The thought of facing you again, knowing what I'd done, the thought of being rejected... I don't know, Tori. It seems insane now. But at the time, I thought maybe I could turn it around, you know? Make the best of things. Get him under the thumb like Beck, work some of the old Jade West magic. At least if there was a career in it, I'd get something, even if I couldn't stand the smug bastard. But it didn't work out that way. It didn't work out that way at all. That's when it started."_

 _"What do you mean?"_

 _"Do you really want to talk about this?"_

 _Tori nodded, afraid to commit to it in words._

 _"He was… rough with me, Tori. Do you know what I mean?"_

 _The look of revulsion on Tori's face said that she did._

" _He liked it that way. That was his thing, that's what got him off. It wasn't all like that, not at the beginning, and at first I thought I could handle it. I mean, I'm an actress, right? If he wanted me to play the damsel in distress, I can do that._

" _But that wasn't enough after a while. He wanted it to be real. He'd wanted me to really feel the pain, the humiliation. He wanted to break me. That was the whole point. That's what did it for him. That's what he'd wanted all along._

" _Do you know what it was like to spend these last few weeks with you, knowing that I'd have to go back? Knowing what I was going back to? I tried to leave. But by then it was too late."_

 _"Too late?"_

 _"I couldn't leave."_

 _"Why not? How could he stop you?"_

 _"Please don't make me tell you, Tori."_

 _"You promised to be honest with me."_

 _"And if you force me to I will. But I'm begging you not to. Please, Tori. For the sake of what we were. One favor. It's the only one I'll ever ask."_

 _"But why?"_

 _"Because you're mad with me right now, and I understand that. You've got every right to be. But at least you can look me in the eye."_

 _"What?"_

" _Please, just... give me this. Just let me have these last few days before it happens."_

 _"Before what happens?"_

 _" I'll lose you, Tori. I'll lose everything. That'll be the price," she said, "if I don't go back."_

 _._

 _._

 _._

One o'clock. There was something about this time of night, the first of the small hours. It marked the point between being up late, and _staying_ up late. It was a threshold. A line to be crossed. A boundary between happenstance and choice.

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _"No," Tori said, finally. "You won't."_

" _You don't know-"_

" _It doesn't matter what I know. If you can't tell me now, then I'll wait until you can. But you're not going back."_

 _She picked up the bottle of pills. "And you're not doing this, either. Do you have any idea what this would have done to me? What it would have been like to wake up to this?"_

 _"You wouldn't have. I was going to go somewhere else."_

 _"Where? Somewhere like this?" She waved a hand at the surroundings. "That wouldn't have made it any better, Jade! How do you think I'd feel, to have my dad call and tell me that they've found my ex-girlfriend dead on the floor of some filthy little motel room?"_

" _I doubt your dad would care. He'd think I deserved it."_

" _Jade!"_

" _I'm sorry. It doesn't matter anyway. I couldn't do it in the end."_

"… _Why?"_

" _I just… I couldn't bring myself to leave a world that still had you in it."_

 _._

 _._

 _._

Decision made, she finally gave in to temptation and rolled over, drawing the sleeping girl into her arms.

 _._

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 ** _5:30am_**

Five minutes. It had been exactly five minutes since she'd left Tori asleep, sliding the other girl's arm from her waist, trying not to notice its slender protection offered without judgment, fighting back the urge to stay where she was and let her fate blow on the wind.

To stay with Tori. What she wouldn't give for that to be her future. But it was too late.

It was still dark when she reached the car. She'd left money on the table for a cab. It was only now she wondered how many times the room must have seen that little act, how many sad little stacks of cash had substituted for words.

She realized she'd left her jacket in the room. She entertained a brief fantasy that Tori would keep it, wear it once in a while to remind her. But she knew she wouldn't. This time tomorrow, it would be ashes.

Her key was still in the pocket, but she had a spare in her bag. She unlocked the door and threw her rucksack into the passenger seat, sliding in behind the wheel without a glance.

 _._

She felt the cold steel on the back of her neck, and froze.

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._


End file.
